About the Schenectady County Historical Society
The Schenectady County Historical Society is a private, nonprofit institution founded in 1905 to share and preserve Schenectady County's history. From its headquarters at 32 Washington Avenue in the Stockade Historic District, the society operates three sites: the Schenectady History Museum and Grems-Doolittle Library, the Mabee Farm Historic Site in Rotterdam Junction, and the 1735 Brouwer House Creative, one of Schenectady's oldest homes. A small staff and a 17-member board of trustees run exhibits, research services, school programs, and community events, including the African American Historical Records Project.
The museum collection numbers more than 12,500 objects spanning art and decorative arts, toys, clothing and textiles, farm equipment and tools, archaeological artifacts, and objects related to Schenectady industry and trade, presented through interactive exhibits on the county's past. Annual events include candlelight tours, a Festival of Trees, concerts, festivals, kayaking excursions, and guided walking tours.
The society's most remarkable property is the Mabee Farm Historic Site at 1100 Main Street in Rotterdam Junction, about six miles west of the city on the Mohawk River. Its stone farmhouse, begun by Jan Mabee and Anna Boorsboom on land patented in 1680, dates to approximately 1705 and has been confirmed through dendrochronology at Cornell University as the oldest known unaltered structure standing in the Mohawk Valley. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and donated to the society in 1993 by George Franchere, the last Mabee descendant to own it, the farm's roughly nine-acre core (enlarged by 27 acres in 2007 and nine more across the river in 2009) includes a 1760s brick house, a 1790s inn, a 1760s Dutch barn moved from Johnstown in 1997, a family cemetery with 21 headstones dating from 1771, nature trails, and the 13,000-square-foot George E. Franchere Education Center, completed in 2011. The site documents three centuries of farming as well as the 14 people known to have been enslaved there, and draws more than 15,000 visitors a year.
Collections and Research Services
The Grems-Doolittle Library, in a 3,000-square-foot addition built in 1991 beside the museum, is the county's principal local history research center. It holds over 6,000 books and periodicals, 30,000 photographic prints, 750 maps, 65 linear feet of newspaper clippings and surname files, and roughly 2,000 linear feet of archival records, including genealogies, oral histories, diaries, yearbooks, wills, church records, and the records of county schools, businesses, and organizations. Indexed resources include transcribed obituary and marriage notices from 1812 to 1884, almshouse census records from 1875 to 1920, naturalization records from 1809 to 1929, and city directories. The library is open by appointment only; contact the librarian at (518) 374-0263 or librarian@schenectadyhistorical.org at least two business days ahead and name the materials you need so they can be pulled. Library use is free for members and $8 per visit for non-members. Staff and volunteers will also research on your behalf: a single-source "look-up" such as a city directory entry is $10, comprehensive research is $35 per hour with a one-hour minimum, photocopies are 50 cents a page, and staff scans are $15 to $20. See our guides to old city directories and finding where someone is buried before you book.
Planning Your Visit
The Schenectady History Museum and Grems-Doolittle Library are at 32 Washington Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12305, with parking behind the building. The museum is open Monday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; admission is $8, free for children, students with ID, and members, and the society participates in Museums for All, admitting up to four people free with an EBT card. The first floor, including the library and main museum floor, is wheelchair accessible, but second-floor exhibits currently are not. Mabee Farm, at 1100 Main Street, Rotterdam Junction, NY 12150, offers guided tours Fridays and Saturdays at 11 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 3 p.m. from September through June and Wednesday through Saturday in July and August, with a large on-site lot; admission is $10, free for children, students, and members, and the grounds, education center, and all historic buildings except the brick house are wheelchair accessible. Current hours and events are at schenectadyhistorical.org.
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